Troy Rising 1 - Live Free or Die (2 page)

The receptionist looked at the readout and frowned. The Caller ID readout was a random
string of numbers.

“The penalty for hacking the White House is...”

“Please contact your intelligence agencies and confirm that this call is coming from a
satellite and has no ground based transmission. We are the Grtul, the People of the Ring.
We come in peace. In five days, on your Thursday, at 12PM Greenwich Mean Time, we will
call your President through a more secure means. This should give him time to clear his
schedule. This will be a conference call with several of your major leaders, all of whom
have been contacted or will be contacted. Please ensure your President is informed of this
call. Thank you. Good bye.”

***

“So... Do we know
which
secure line they're calling?” the President asked.

The Secure Room in the White House was, like most of the rooms in the White House, small.
And compared to some secure rooms, not particularly secure. It had been repeatedly
upgraded but when you started off with a concrete basement in a limestone building built
in the 1800s there was only so much you could do. The Joint Chiefs much preferred the Tank
in the Pentagon.

“We're ready no matter where it comes in, Mr. President,” the Chief of Staff said. The
room was more or less at capacity since nobody knew the agenda for the meeting. State,
Defense, the Joint Chiefs, NSA, DNI, himself, even Treasury and Commerce had horned in.
About the only member of the 'core' cabinet not present was Interior. Surprising even
himself the Director of NASA
had
managed to get a seat.

“Nobody talks but me,” the President said just as the phone rang. He took a deep breath
and pressed the button for the speaker phone. “President of the United States.”

"Waiting... Waiting... Present are the Presidents of the United States and Russia, Prime
Ministers of Britain, France, Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil. Each have staff
present. We will not be responding to questions. We are the Grtul. We come in peace. The
ring in your sky is a gate to other worlds. We produce these rings and move them into star
systems. Use of the ring requires payment. The payment schedule will be sent to you. There
is to be no use of hostile energy systems within three hundred thousand kilometers of the
ring which are capable of damaging the ring. Anyone who pays may use the ring.

"In seven days we will make a general broadcast to the people of your planet on the
subject of the ring. This will give you sufficient time to make your own statements and
prevent panic.

"You have a distributed information system. We will establish a document on the
information system which will give the full rules, schedules and regulations of the ring.
We will include a list of answers to questions. In the last ninety million years we have
been asked most conceivable questions. We will answer the three most common questions
asked and then we will terminate this call.

“By 'anyone can use the ring' do we mean that another species can use it to enter your
system? Yes. Does that mean that hostile or friendly forces can use it? Yes. Are you
allowed to block the ring? No. Good bye.”

“Hell,” the President said as the phone went dead. “Those
were
my top questions. NASA? Input?”

“There is a real philosophical question whether there
can
be hostile species at the level to be able to use interstellar travel,” the Director
said. “The energies involved mean that survival as a species if you are innately hostile
becomes difficult. If you can create a space craft that can go three hundred thousand
miles in any reasonable time frame, you can more or less destroy a world. The biosphere at
least. Over time, hostile species will tend to wipe themselves out.”

“That's a great philosophical point,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said. “But the fact
that the Grtul mention hostile species and not fighting near the ring probably means
you're more or less dead wrong. Pun intended. And according to my people, we can't even
get
to this thing.”

“Oh, we can get there,” the Director said. “We're working on a proposal for a manned space
craft capable of the journey.”

“Time and budget?” the President asked, wincing.

“About five years and... well, the budget is still being worked on.”

“Under or over a trillion?” the National Security Advisor asked.

“Oh, under. Probably.”

***

Two Years After First Contact

(NASA has completed preliminary studies to the studies necessary to begin preliminary
design phase of the bid phase on a potential ship to reach, but not enter, the Gudrum
Ring. Cost: $976 million dollars.)

The Prime Minister of Britain picked up his phone without looking. It was the ringtone of
his Secretary.

“Yes, Janice?”

“Actually, my name is Andrilae Rirgo of the Glatun. I am the captain of an exploratory
vessel which has just exited your Grtul Ring. We come in peace and are interested in
trade.”

The Prime Minister looked at the handset then at the phone which was registering a random
string of numbers from the Caller ID. Just as he was getting over the shock the door
opened and his Secretary started waving her arms frantically. He was able to read her lips
well enough to get the words 'Gate emergence'. The rather graphic hand motions, not to
mention his current conversation, helped. He nodded at her and went back to his
conversation.

“Well, uh, Mr... Rirgo did you say? Welcome to earth.”

***

“So we really don't have anything they want?” the President said.

“No, sir,” the Commerce Secretary said. “The computer chips they're offering are centuries
more advanced than anything we produce. Enormous storage and something close to infinite
parallel processing. They also integrate with terrestrial systems seamlessly. Somehow. The
IT experts are scratching their head as to how. But why they can just take over our
systems is now pretty obvious. The chips are more like viruses than computers. But what
they mainly want is precious metals. Specifically the platinum group which are pretty
rare. Also gold.”

“Do we mine those?” the President asked.

“We do in small quantities,” Interior said. “More in Canada. Most are extracted from
nickel and copper mining. Most of the world's deposits are in South Africa or Russia.”

“Damnit.”

***

Three Years After First Contact

“This had better be important,” the President said as he entered the Situation Room. The
Secret Service had practically yanked him out of a meeting with the Saudi Ambassador.

“We've had a gate emergence,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said over the video link.

“We've had those every few months for the last year,” the President pointed out. “Mostly
what I suppose could be tramp freighters, no offense to our Glatun friends intended.”

It had quickly become apparent that even tramp freighter captains could access any
electronic transmission. This had less to do with the super advanced chips they traded,
for enormous amounts of heavy metals or anything else that seemed of some worth, than
their software systems and implant technology. Efforts to duplicate their information
technology had so far been unsuccessful and most experts put humans as at least five
hundred years behind current Glatun technology.

“Not Glatun. The ship looks like a warship and isn't responding to our standard hails.”

“Is it... big?” the President asked. He'd been elected on the basis of his domestic
programs and wasn't quite up to speed on international affairs much less interstellar.

“It really doesn't matter how big it is, Mr. President,” the Admiral in command of Space
Command responded. “We still don't get the engineering of Glatun reactionless drive or
their power systems. So we're grounded. If it's a warship it's going to be able to hold
the orbitals. And who holds the orbitals, holds the world.”

“Oh.”

***

“All stocks of precious metals,” the Secretary of State said. “Private, corporate and
governmental. We can keep enough stock of gold to keep the IT industry running but that's
it. We pointed out that it would make us more efficient at extraction and they accepted
the argument but palladium, which turns out is important for hard drives, has to be turned
over. That's for all the world's governments. Or our cities get what Mexico City, Shanghai
and Cairo got. Pony up and the Horvath won't nuke the rest of the world.”

“Technically they weren't nukes,” SpacCom pointed out. “They were kinetic energy weapons.
Practical effect is similar but no fallout thank God.”

“Why those three?” the President asked. “Did they say?”

“No, sir,” SpacCom said. “But if you've ever seen a night shot of the world it's pretty
obvious. They picked the three that are most noticeable. Since we're in a shield room I'll
point out that that was a pretty poor choice on their part. I don't think they'd developed
full intel on the planet. Doesn't really matter but it's a potential chink in their armor.
They're not gods.”

“True,” the JCS said. “But we also can't fight them. Recommendation of the JCS is that we
pay the tribute and try to get the Glatun to intervene. We just
can't
fight them.”

“So are we going to have them landing here?” the President asked. “If so there's going to
be a major security situation.”

“So far we haven't even seen the Horvath,” the Secretary of State said. “All discussion
has been electronic or with their robots. As to where they are landing...” She nodded at
the Secretaries of Commerce and Interior.

“We and Canada will ship our small amount of production to South Africa which will handle
the transfer,” Commerce said. “There will only be landings in South Africa and Russia. And
only to pick up refined metals. They appear to want to keep the world running so that we
can fill their holds. Not that we can; the whole world's production amounts to a few dozen
tons a year.”

SpacCom looked a bit irritated for a moment, possibly because his aide had touched him on
the arm, then grunted.

“What I don't get is why they're getting them on the planet,” SpacCom said. “According to
my experts, most of this stuff is to be found in asteroids. We've got a ton of asteroids
just cluttering up the damned system. Most of what we mine is from asteroids that have
crashed into the earth. Why not just mine the asteroid belt?”

“Possibly because then slaves don't do it for them,” the President said, dryly.

***

“It's a matter of what your world calls realpolitik,” the Glatun representative said,
politely. The Glatun was a bit over a meter and a half tall biped with blue skin, red
eyes, a vaguely pig-like head and snout and a mane of white fur running down his back. He
was dressed in an informal tunic for the discussion which was, in diplospeak, 'non-binding
and informal.' Which was where all the really serious binding resolutions were always
hammered out.

“We have called for the Horvath to remove themselves from your world's orbitals and they
have chosen to ignore our requests. Since Earth is, to them, a very good conquest,
relatively rich in heavy metals compared to Horvath, they won't leave absent either armed
confrontation or, possibly, a trade embargo. Since Earth has, essentially, little or no
value to the Glatun Federation, we have a sufficiency of strategic metals, and there are
negative aspects to both choices on our part we must unfortunately state that we remain
neutral in this dispute.”

“We have... an extensive asteroid belt,” the Undersecretary of State for Interstellar
Affairs said, throwing in her only bone. “We believe it to be rich in the platinum group.”

“For which you should be grateful,” the Glatun replied. “Most inhabited systems are mined
out. However, our laws, and long experience, prevent us from mining your asteroid belt as
long as there is not a centralized, or at least effectively sovereign, system government.
The Horvath meet the definition, not the United States of America. Certainly not the UN.
The Horvath have, also, offered the asteroid belt. Be equally grateful that we declined
that offer. There are enormous problems with asteroid mining. It requires quite large
lasers and fabbers and is fuel and energy intensive. To make it worthwhile for a Glatun
corporation to invest in this system would require long-term leases. In the current
security and political situation the Glatun Federation would not permit such legally
binding contracts.”

“We're on our own.” The USSIA finally said, becoming decidedly informal. “We have sixteen
million dead, three major cities in ashes and you're
neutral
?”

“Since we are speaking frankly,” the Glatun said. “The decision of our policy makers is
that Earth is simply sufficiently unknown and unnoticeable to take the chance of losing
credibility in a minor dispute. The reality is that the Horvath, who are not much more
advanced than Earth, would probably leave if so much as a single Glatun destroyer entered
the system and ordered them to do so. However, if they didn't and shots were fired, much
less loss of Glatun life, there would be questions asked in Parliament, AI queries and of
course the press would simply go wild. It is easier and safer to do nothing. Absent Earth
becoming more of a hot-topic in the Glatun Federation or becoming in some way
strategically important, yes, you are on your own.”

Tyler dropped his chainsaw and pulled out his cellphone. He'd barely felt the vibration
and it was impossible to hear over the saw. He looked at the Caller ID and tried not to
curse. Three missed calls from the same... Arrgh!

“Tyler Vernon.”

“Tyler, it's Mrs. Cranshaw. How are you today?”

“Just fine, ma'am,” Tyler said, squeezing his eyes shut and waiting for it. She always
started nice. “And you?”

“Fine, just fine,” Mrs. Cranshaw said. “Fine weather we're having. Getting cold. The frost
should bring out the leaves a treat.”